Apocalypse Now Quotes

Col. G. Lucas Your mission is to proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it, and learn what you can along the way. When you find the Colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the Colonel's command.

Willard Terminate the Colonel?

Lt. Gen. R. Corman He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.

Jerry ].

Lucas You understand, Captain, that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist.

Chef How come all you guys sit on your helmets?

Soldier So we don't get our balls blown off.

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard Saigon. Shit. I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now, waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard Oh, man. The bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it.

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz The horror ... the horror.

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz I worry that my son might not understand what I've tried to be. And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything — everything I did, everything you saw — because there's nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies. And if you understand me, Willard, you will do this for me.

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard Dear son,I'm afraid that both you and your mother will have been worried at not hearing from me during the past weeks, but my situation here has become a difficult one. I've been officially accused of murder by the Army. The alleged victims were four Vietnamese double agents. We spent months uncovering them and accumulating evidence. When absolute proof was completed, we acted. We acted like soldiers. The charges are unjustified. They are, in fact, and in the circumstances of this conflict, quite completely insane. In a war, there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action — what is often called ruthless, what may in many circumstances be only clarity — seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it directly, quickly, awake, looking at it. I will trust you to tell your mother what you choose about this letter. As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid, lying morality, and so I am beyond caring.You have all my faith.Your loving father.

Willard Are you crazy, Goddamn it? Don't you think its a little risky for some R&R?

Kilgore If I say it's safe to surf this beach, Captain, then it's safe to surf this beach. I mean, I'm not afraid to surf this place. I'll surf this whole fucking place!

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard They were gonna make me a major for this, and I wasn't even in their fucking army anymore. Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway.

Carlsen I'm Lt. Carlsen. I was sent from Nha Trang with this message for you three days ago, sir. They expected you here a little sooner. This is mail for the boat's crew. You don't know how happy this makes me in delivering all this.

Lt. Col. William "Bill" Kilgore You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of em, not one stinkin dink body. The smell — you know that gasoline smell — the whole hill smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end.

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.

Photojournalist Why? Why would a nice guy like you want to kill a genius? Going down pretty good, huh? Why? Do you know that the man really likes you? He likes you. He really likes you. But he's got something in mind for you. Aren't you curious about that? I'm curious. I'm very curious. Are you curious? There's something happening out here, man. You know something, man? I know something you that you don't know. That's right, Jack. The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad. Oh, yeah. He's dying, I think. He hates all this. He hates it! But the man's a...he reads poetry out loud, alright? And a voice...he likes you because you're still alive. He's got plans for you. No, I'm not gonna help you. You're gonna help him, man. You're gonna help him. I mean, what are they gonna say, man, when he's gone? Cause he dies when it dies, man! When it dies, he dies! What are they gonna say about him? What? Are they gonna say he was a kind man? He was a wise man? He had plans? He had wisdom? Bullshit, man! And am I gonna be the one that's gonna set them straight? Look at me! Wrong! You!

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz Have you ever considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinion of others... even the opinions of yourself?

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz As long as cold beer, hot food, rock n roll, and all the other amenities remain expected norm, our conduct of the war will only gain impotence.

Engineman 3rd Class Jay "Chef" Hicks This Colonel guy? He's wacko, man! He's far worse than crazy, he's evil! I mean, that's what the man's got set up here. It's fuckin pagan idolatry! Look around you. Shit! He's loco... I ain't afraid of all them fuckin skulls and altars and shit. I used to think if I died in an evil place, then my soul wouldn't be able to make it to Heaven. But now? Fuck, I mean, I don't care where it goes, as long as it ain't here! So whaddya wanna do? I'll kill the fuck...

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard Part of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I got there. I knew the risks, or imagined I knew. But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront him.

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile, a pile of little arms. And I remember I...I...I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized, like I was shot — like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God, the genius of that. The genius! The will to do that: perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand it. These were not monsters. These were men, trained cadres — these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who have children, who are filled with love — but they had the strength — the strength! — to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment. Without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Lt. Gen. R. Corman Well, you see, Willard, in this war, things get confused out there: power, ideals, the old morality, practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God, because there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil, and good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what ] called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You and I have one. Walter Kurtz has reached his, and very obviously, he has gone insane.

Hubert de Marais See, Captain, when my grandfather and my uncle's father came here there was nothing. The Vietnamese were nothing. So we worked hard, very hard, and brought rubber from Brazil and then planted here. We took the Vietnamese, work with them, make something: something out of nothing. So when you ask me why we want to stay here, Captain, we want to stay here because it's ours. It belongs to us. It keeps our family together. I mean, we fight for that, while you Americans — you are fighting for the biggest nothing in all of history!

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard It's a way we had over here with living with ourselves. We cut em in half with a machine gun and give em a Band-Aid. It was a lie, and the more I saw them, the more I hated lies. Those boys were never gonna look at me the same way again, but I felt like I knew one or two things about Kurtz that weren't in the dossier. Do Lung Bridge was the last Army outpost in the Nung River. Beyond it, there was only Kurtz.

Lt. Col. William "Bill" Kilgore Charlie don't surf!

Photojournalist This is the way the world ends. Look at this shit we're in man. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, and with a whimper, I'm splitting, Jack. ] ] – "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper".]

Willard Who's the commanding officer here, soldier?

Infantryman Ain't you?

Willard Soldier, do you know who's in command here?

The Roach Yeah.

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard If the generals back in Nha Trang could see what I saw, would they still want me to kill him? More than ever probably.

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz I've seen horrors, horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror! Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.

Lt. Col. William "Bill" Kilgore *Note: bolded line is ranked #12 in the ] in American cinema, and has replaced the full reference in popular culture.

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard Never get out of the boat." Absolutely goddamn right! Unless you were goin all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin program.

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!

Photojournalist This is dialectics. It's very simple dialectics: one through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without like, you know, with fractions! What are you going to land on, one quarter, three eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics, okay?

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare: crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor and surviving.

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz's memory any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story really is a confession, then so is mine.

Cpt. Benjamin L. Willard Charlie didn't get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death or victory.